CAP controls: save money, keep it simple

"Four billion Euros of EU money is spent every year to make sure that farmers obey every single one of the many complex EU rules. With better regulation and simplified monitoring we could save taxpayers’ money, save time and preserve farmers nerves!", said Petri Sarvamaa MEP. His Report ‘Protecting the financial interest of the Union: towards performance-based controls of the Common Agricultural Policy’ was adopted in the European Parliament’s Budgetary Control Committee with a vast majority of votes.

"The huge administrative burden on farmers is well recognised and I'm happy to see that there is a large political unanimity in Parliament to simplify the whole monitoring process. The European Commission is also taking decisive steps in this direction as became clear during the drafting process of my Report", he said.

Checking 50 million transactions and other CAP controls costs around €4 billion a year and if nothing is done, it is expected that monitoring costs of the €58 billion CAP budget will only grow.

According to Sarvamaa, it is essential that the first level checks and the data communicated by Member States are fully reliable so that checks are not duplicated. The objective is to put the single audit scheme with only one chain of audits into practice.

"Promoting performance-based controls is also very important. On the basis of a thorough analysis, we should identify the best and the worst-performing Member States, regions, sectors and adapt the level of controls accordingly."